How to
Market an Ebook
| home | epublishing | disclaimer |
Ebook Marketing
2nd August 2006
If you want to sell your ebook then you are going to have to think about ebook marketing. This page has a few ideas to get you going.
- Online auctions, like Ebay, are one way. A search on 'ebook' in Ebay, just now, found 13,306 items. Obviously, this is a popular way to sell ebooks. (Note: March 2008; Ebay might now ban the sale of digital products in downloadable form - you might need to put your ebook onto a CD first - see - hopefully - later article.)
- Another popular ebook marketing tool is Clickbank. This site catalogues thousands of digital products for sale. Many of these seem to be 'info-products' and if your ebook is an info-product (providing information for sale) then Clickbank could be worth considering.
- How about using an online ebookstore to market your ebook? There are more than a few to choose from and some will let you list your ebook for free.
- Having a website to promote and sell your ebook can be a big marketing plus. Of course you then have the problem of how to promote your website. But used correctly a website and can be a great marketing aid and a great way to let people see what you have to offer.
- Many consider articles to be a good way to promote your ebook. Web site owners, ezine publishers and others are constantly on the look out for inexpensive (preferably free), quality content. Why not write a short article on a subject related to your ebook content and offer this for free? Place a link to your sales page in your byline and see what happens. Do this right and you could get a great deal of extra promotion for your ebook.
- Blogs, of course, are a mainstream internet activity in their own right. If you have a popular blog or can develop one then using this to promote your ebook has to be well worth considering. Again, a link back to your ebook sales page is the way to go.
- If you have the time you might consider writing an ebook on a related subject and offering this for free. Include a link to your website or your sales page and make it the kind of ebook people would want to pass on to their friends and colleagues. It might be much simpler to make it a free article though, so consider carefully before investing too much time and effort in this method.
- To make your ebook a little more appealing to buyers who might otherwise be hesitant you might want to offer the first two or three chapters free of charge. You could make these available online - ideally on your promotional website - or maybe offer your ebook as a free download with only the free chapters accessible until the customer has made a payment. Some ebook software will allow you to do this by applying a password to the rest of the content - when the customer makes a payment you email the password.
There are many ways to market your ebook. The above are just a few ideas to get you thinking.
Selling Your Ebook
Once you have found a buyer for your ebook you need a way to take the payment.
Some sellers will accept a cheque through the post. But maybe your customers will not expect to wait for a week or so until their cheque reaches you and is cleared by your bank. And selling worldwide is hardly an option if you cannot accept a payment quickly. Setting yourself up with online merchant facilities can expensive and tricky, however, if you go about it the wrong way. If you already have suitable merchant facilities then that might be the way to go. But ask yourself whether PayPal will not meet your needs. PayPal can be simple to operate and relatively inexpensive.
| home | contact | copying | linking | privacy | disclaimer |
© Trevor Womack 2006